"I AM ELOISE. I AM SIX": RARE FIRST EDITION OF KAY THOMPSON'S CLASSIC, ELOISE
THOMPSON, Kay. Eloise. Drawings by Hilary Knight. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1955. Slim quarto, original white pictorial cloth, pictorial endpapers, original dust jacket.
First edition of the first and rarest Eloise book.
"Eloise's birth was unexpected. At rehearsals of her act with the Williams Brothers, Thompson [who was a professional singer] prized punctuality. Then one day she was late. In a high, childish voice that she had never used before, she made her apology. One of her co-workers said, 'Who are you, little girl?' Thompson replied, 'I am Eloise. I am six.' The others joined in the game, each assuming a juvenile identity, and it became a regular rehearsal pastime" (New York Times). That pastime became a book, with three more to follow in Thompson's lifetime. "Eloise became an alternative persona for Kay Thompson, much as the dummy Charlie McCarthy was for Edgar Bergen? [allowing] Thompson to express contrarian thoughts and ideas. Eloise took form as a lonely and whimsical child who created her own world" (Marie Brenner).
Interior clean; a bit of faint toning to original cloth, boards gently bowed. Dust jacket with minuscule rubs to extremities and mild toning to spine. A near-fine copy.